Innovative, inspired and with replay value better than The Sims what more could you ask for?
The Movies allows you to take control of a movie studio, real world examples include Warner Brothers and Universal Studios in much the same fashion as Roller Coaster Tycoon and other games of that nature: you hire builders and janitors, make some buildings, make some sets and boom! - you're away. What makes The Movies so special, however, is its "starts" system that it is pretty much The Sims. So aswell as building and maintaining your lot and making movies (as I'll come onto later) you have to maintain your stars. Now your stars arn't as stupid as The Sims, if they need some food they'll get some food, if they need the toilet they'll go to the toilet...providing you have the facilities required. Instead of telling the stars exactly what their every single movement should be you just have to make sure they can do the movemetns THEY want to make. For example, you don't need to tell them when they need the toilet but what you do need to do is make sure there are plenty of fancy, state-of-the-art toilets for them to use to keep them happy. If you can't fullfill their needs they'll start to get angry and/or depressed and if that happens they won't work well on set and won't get on well with other stars. Other things that get on their nerves is a low salary so you've got to keep ahead on that, you need to make sure they have a nice trailer and make sure they have plenty of other stars as friends. But it gets even more detailed than that, stars can become jealous of other stars' trailers, wages and frienship groups so you'll have to be a little left wing and treat everyone equally. You can even assine paparatzi to stars in compromising positions to boost them in the charts but it could upset them and lead to depression...then they might turn to the drink and then they might get addicted AND THEN you'll have to put them in rehab for a year. Yes, this is how deep the game goes.
Making movies is the real joy of this game. After completing the main game you can use the sandbox mode of the game and start at any date with any amount of money with everything unlocked and some easy options on, such as building construct instantly. With these you can concentrate on soley making movies; no annoying stars, no paparatzi, no award ceremonies to worry about. Nothing. Bliss. Anyways, this is when you have free time to make the script of your dreams, film it, put it in post production, export it to WMV format and then do whatever you want with it. Perfect.
In the main game however you'll have to put up with some random pre-writed scripts spat out by your script writers but you can still make it your own by adding in your own voice acting and the like.
As for the graphics, they arn't spectacular but they're good enough. It's just a shame about the bugs that are present, even in the patched version of the game. There are many instances of parts where objects will be sort of phasing through your stars hands and skins showing through bits of cloathing and things of that nature. Luckily it doesn't ruin the game though. The Moives is also a very difficult game and with no cheats you can't do what everyone does with the Sims: cheat!
Not to try and load off some advertising on you but to check out an example of a "Movies" movie, check out my film: http://uk.gamespot.com/users/ChestyMcGee/video_player?id=JXM7lTKv5b8OvzLX